Move approved: Columbia (Burbank) set to drop to 2B

With enrollment numbers taking a dip, Burbank’s Columbia High School will drop down to compete in the 2B ranks beginning in the 2018-19 school year, a move the WIAA approved at its January Executive Board meeting earlier this week.

The Coyotes’ teams will move from the 1A SCAC East to play in the EWAC, where Richland’s Liberty Christian and Pasco’s Tri-Cities Prep also compete.

The move comes 2 years into the WIAA’s current 4-year classification cycle, which is allowed by permission if enrollment numbers change drastically enough. Columbia athletic director Jay Aune said 214 students were enrolled in the school’s top three grades when the most recent cycle started in 2016-17, and that number has dropped to 180 this year.

“We’ve been the smallest 1A school on the years they’ve counted the last couple of times around,” Aune said. “We decided we’d just bite the bullet and reclassify.”

One of the area’s longest-running rivalries, between Burbank and River View, of Finley, will no longer be an intra-conference affair, as the Panthers will remain in the SCAC East. In their final regular season league basketball games on Tuesday, the Burbank girls got a 52-49 victory for a season sweep, while the River View boys picked up a 47-29 win to split the season series.

Other mid-cycle reclassifications include: Jenkins (Chewelah), also going from 1A to 2B; Granite Falls from 2A to 1A; and Redmond from 3A to 4A.

THEM’S THE RULES

A couple rules changes were also approved for spring state championship events at the WIAA Executive Board Meeting:

▪ Rangefinders will be allowed at the state golf championship.

▪ State track events will be seeded by district qualifying times. Previously, they had been seeded by district placements.

A full list of the executive board’s actions can be found here.

This story was originally published January 31, 2018 at 4:53 PM with the headline "Move approved: Columbia (Burbank) set to drop to 2B."